


In this World or any Other

by Amrynth



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: AU August, Alternate Universe - Isekai, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, I gave myself the sads working on this, Magical Portal, Molly lives in the end, Optimistic Ending, Temporary Character Death, s2e26 SPOILERS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amrynth/pseuds/Amrynth
Summary: After Mollymauk's death in the Marrow Valley, he wakes up in the library with a burning need: to get back to his friends.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	In this World or any Other

**Author's Note:**

> Technically tomorrow is Day 14 of AU August: Isekai, but I was excited and worked on this ahead of time. I made up AU August this year so no rules, I do what I want!
> 
> I may have given myself the sads working on this (and solved it watching a animation of Vex shooting Scanlan in the throat)
> 
> I promise it has an optimistic ending!

Oh fuck. He was really dying. Molly clutched at the weapon in his chest but didn’t let the bubble of fear show on his face. This was what he’d done with this new life of his and he would own that.

Life with the circus had taught him to laugh and Yasha had taught him the value of loyalty. Yasha. He needed- if he could just save her then this would all have been worth it. He had to leave the world better for being in it.

Then there had been this crew of idiots. Beauregard who had so much to learn, who burned with so much light she’d blinded herself to what she could do. Nott knew more about family than anyone he’d ever met, who made him want to be family so badly it hurt. And Caleb- Molly could see how the past haunted him, how he had clawed his way with spit and blood to being a person deserving of all the love and still couldn’t forgive himself. 

They needed him now and he couldn’t- His hands were cold and he couldn’t tell if he was still grabbing at the glaive pinning him to the ground. 

Fjord who treasured the secrets of his past and hoarded them like a dragon. And Jester, she always had a joke she was ready to pull off and both saw and brought out the best in all of them. He had to save them. 

Mollymauk was dying and he wasn’t sure what he’d accomplished in the last two years was worth anything if he couldn’t save the people who made it matter. The people who brought light into the world and made it better. 

But he was dying. He wouldn’t let the fear show, instead pulling on a well deeper than he could know and spitting blood in the eye of his own death. There was a flare of pain and then nothing. And he kept his eyes open, challenging the world to do better.

-

Molly woke with a start, cheek pressed against the delicate pages of the book that he had fallen asleep on. He’d been sleeping but his eyes felt dry and his mouth coppery with the taste of blood. He was so sluggish to piece everything together, disoriented from waking up in the library. It didn’t fit because he’d been in- the Marrow Valley. In Exandra. 

“Oh fuck.” His voice still had his accent, the brogue rolling off his tongue easily. 

“Shh.” 

“Sorry,” Molly responded in a whisper, remembering to use his library voice this time. 

He closed the book and gathered his things; backpack with laptop, charging cord. Molly was tempted to just leave it all behind because what he really needed was to get back. His hands were shaking as he found his university card to borrow the book his face had been glued to and nervously agreeing with the library attendant it was exam nerves. 

The fuck had happened? Molly’s heart raced in his chest but when he closed his eyes all he could feel was Lorenzo’s glaive through his chest. He gasped and the warm, spring air was a contrast to the cold mountains he was still expecting. When he’d closed the book, Molly had put a slip of paper into the page that had been open, a chapter called “The Chronicles of Exandria” which was a purportedly fictional realm. It was only included in the book in his hands because the inventor claimed to have been there and had been widely considered a crackpot at the time. 

Was Molly losing his mind working on his thesis? Had the last two years been a dream? 

He closed his eyes and felt the glaive again. Saw the nine eyes. 

-

Yasha. She had- her eyes didn’t match. And she was family. Right? They were- they were part of the circus? 

Molly kept his eyes closed, pushing his palms against them until lights swam in front of them. It was getting hard to remember them, to sort of what was real and what was there. Which was real. He’d written it down to remind himself but he liked to go over it in the morning. But it was getting harder. 

Was it Nott or Beauregard who hated their father? And Fjord had a… some sort of magic sword? 

He found his notes and studied them more intensely than he’d studied for a final. 

Sometimes he woke up with the taste of blood in his mouth and the smell of mountains in his nose, and those were the days he felt more alive and less in limbo. 

-

The book would only work once. It was unfortunate that the man who was supposed to have created Exandria, Halas, had apparently disappeared. Molly had wasted a lot of time trying to track him down only to find that every lead ended up at a dead end. He’d found some rather cryptic books though and gotten so lost in them that he had woken up able to remember everyone as clear as it had been when he’d first come back to the library. 

Molly had a theory that the book wouldn’t work again and Halas had written extensive and cryptic books on his own process of finding a way back. He’d been interested in the manipulation of space and the realms, but most of that went right over Molly’s head.. There were no reports of his death, but it was impossible he was still alive just based on the publication dates of the books. But the other part of Molly’s theory was what kept him moving. That Halas had found another way to Exandria. And Molly was going to follow in his tracks until he also found a way to get back. 

This wasn’t the first mildewy smelling antique store he’d stepped into, but the difference in temperature from the outdoors covered his skin in goosebumps anyway. Halas had been obsessed with something he called a Gate Stone. Molly wasn’t sure he would know one on sight without the small diagrams that Halas had left behind, but he had all of the Halas books in the messenger bag he held close against his chest while he perused the antique shop. 

“Anything I can help you find?”

“I don’t suppose you have anything that looks like this?” Molly pulled one of the books out and flipped to a marked page without much effort. He spent so much time looking at that page he could have found it with a blindfold on. 

The proprietor leaned forward across the counter and squinted through the thickest glasses Molly had ever seen at the diagram in the book. “Might could have seen that.”

“Really?” His heart leapt in his chest and he kept his eyes open. 

“It’ll cost you,” they mumbled while shuffling to the dustiest glass case Molly had ever seen. 

“It doesn’t matter.” Molly had lost the brogue some time ago, but it rolled off his tongue like he’d been speaking that way yesterday. 

“You won't remember.” They lowered their glasses and looked at Molly over the rims. 

“...will they?” he asked, voice full of trepidation. Sometimes he couldn’t remember the Mighty Nein, sometimes he got their names confused in his head and had to write them all down on his skin like a tattoo. Sometimes all he could remember was the eyes and the glaive. But what he did know about them was they would find Mollymauk, even if they had to pull the world down to do so. 

“Oh yes. The story has continued and they still fight. But that is the cost, you will not remember them, your previous life or this one.” 

“Yes.” Molly didn’t have to hear anything else, agreeing to the vague terms almost before the shop owner had offered them. 

They laughed, soft and dry and perhaps even wistful. From within the dusty case, they pulled a blue stone the size of Molly’s closed fist and he could feel it pulling at the edges of his being. Maybe there had been a point he’d belonged in this world, surely he’d been happy at some point. But that had all been before he’d been Mollymauk. Now he felt incomplete here, like the fiber of him had been stretched too thin and the longer it took to get back the more threadbare that fiber became. 

“How does it work?” he asked, voice hoarse and tight with need. Oh gods he could feel that it was magic without even touching it. He hadn’t known how badly he missed magic, had forgotten it was real except when he was in the space between sleep and dreams. 

“Don’t know.”

Molly made a frustrated noise. “But I can go back. Right? I have to- I don’t belong here anymore.”

“Yes. You can go back,” they assured him. 

“Will I take anything with me?” Molly had the vague impression someone… one of his friends would want books, even if they were by a crazy man who thought he was a mage from his world. 

“Don’t know.” 

“A right fount of information you are. Alright, I’m ready.” If he was going to forget everything, arrive as a new self, a new Mollymauk, it didn’t matter if he tied up his loose ends here. He just had to avoid dying again. Would he be able to find a third route to Exandria? Molly shuddered and could feel the glaive twist in his chest once more. 

“Then concentrate on where you belong.”

-

He woke up in the dark. He woke up in the ground. He woke up clawing his way out of the earth with dirt in his mouth and his eyes. He woke up cold, deep in his bones from the tips of his fingers to the end of his purple tail. It was fortunate that the grave wasn’t too deep, his hands were bleeding by the time he found the sky and breathed fresh air. 

Something moved in the wind and caught his eye. A coat, tattered by wind and time but still whole enough to wear. He hauled himself out of the ground and paused as his hand brushed something half-hidden in the soft carpet of flowers that had covered the ground where he’d been. A card with an ornate back and a depiction of the moon on the front. 

Was that him? He turned the card over to trace the intricate and weather-faded design of the back with the end of his fingers. He tucked the card into a pocket on the coat, but his eyes traveled up one exposed arm across the scars and tattoos. What was he? Who was he? 

On the inside of his forearm, written in ink on top of scars and tattoos, a list of names caught his eye. 

Beauregard

Nott

Fjord

Jester

Caleb

Yasha

Those sounded like names. He narrowed his gaze at the list, unaware of their significance, but he had a place to start. Moon pulled the red coat around himself, drew the rusty sword from where it had been stuck in the ground to hold it, and turned his attention to his surroundings. The strap of a bag stuck out from where he’d climbed from the ground, and he put it over his shoulder as well. He didn’t know who was, he didn’t know where he was going. But he knew there was someone he was looking for. Six of them.


End file.
